S.F. progressives were just trounced in the election. Can they bounce back in the Lurie era?

San Francisco progressives once again came up short at the ballot this week after suffering a string of bruising electoral defeats in recent years.

The latest losses have people on the left end of the city's political spectrum grappling with tough questions about how they can craft a winning message to regain power, who their leaders should be and which causes they should focus on in the months and years ahead.

In two Board of Supervisors races Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly embraced allies of moderate Mayor Daniel Lurie, rejecting challengers who would have shifted the city's legislative branch to become more skeptical of Lurie's centrist agenda. Phil Kim, a Lurie-endorsed school board candidate, also won reelection, defeating two challengers who ran to his left.

Additionally, Proposition D, a union-backed ballot measure that would raise taxes on large companies to fund city services, was trailing by 8.4 points in the latest vote count Thursday. Even in the unlikely event that the measure - which was supported by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt. - ekes out a narrow win as more ballots are tallied, it would fall well short of a sweeping mandate for increasing taxes on big businesses in San Francisco.

The results continue a trend underway since 2022, when city voters recalled three left-leaning school board members and a district attorney who championed criminal justice reform. In 2024, voters decisively backed former Mayor London Breed's ballot measures to expand police powers and mandate drug screening for welfare recipients. The same year, moderates gained control of the San Francisco Democratic Party, and the Board of Supervisors shifted to the center as well.

Now, local progressives are searching for a viable path forward in the Lurie era, when the moderate mayor boasts widespread popularity and the electorate has - so far - backed his political priorities. Well-heeled political donors who support Lurie have spent large amounts of money to advance moderate candidates and causes and will continue to do so.

The November election will be the next test for progressives, as voters weigh in on several supervisor races and choose a successor for Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Progressives are also pushing ballot measures to advance the creation of a public bank and earmark a tax on expensive real estate sales to fund affordable housing. At the same time, Lurie is seeking reforms to the city's governance structure, including an effort to raise the threshold for measures to qualify for the ballot via signature drive - a path often used by progressives.

Jim Ross, a Bay Area political consultant who has worked with progressives, cautioned that they are a loosely defined group usually drawn together in "a coalition of convenience." He said the left flank of San Francisco politics lacks the well-funded organizations that have invested heavily to lift the prospects of moderates in recent elections.

"People who believe in, support or want more progressive policies in San Francisco need to or should really take stock of how they move forward," Ross said. "One of those issues is there's not really a true leader of progressives in San Francisco right now."

One major progressive leader in the past was former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who ran for mayor against Lurie in 2024 but came in third place, behind Breed. Peskin remains an influential figure in San Francisco but was term-limited from the board. He probably won't be able to return to the legislative branch - as he did before - because a ballot measure that would impose lifetime term limits on supervisors was leading by 10 points in the latest count.

San Francisco progressives are known in part for their skepticism toward market-rate housing projects, which they generally view as fueling the displacement of low-income residents from neighborhoods such as the Mission. They are more likely than moderates to seek constraints on police power and criticize the influence of large tech companies. They typically favor harm-reduction strategies for drug users instead of arresting them or forcing them into treatment.

But recent elections have moved the city's leadership away from each of those stances.

Lurie and a majority of city supervisors favor policies that loosen restrictions on residential development, including market-rate homes often derided by progressives as "luxury" housing. Both of Lurie's board allies up for election Tuesday, Stephen Sherrill and Alan Wong, were criticized by opponents for their support of the mayor's "Family Zoning" plan to allow denser housing in parts of the city. Those attacks didn't land: As of the latest count, Sherrill and Wong were winning their respective races with about 70% of the vote.

"If it wasn't already clear, building more housing is popular," Supervisor Bilal Mahmood wrote on social media in response to the election results Wednesday. "YIMBYs are here to stay."

Lurie has also taken a friendly posture toward tech companies, including those driving the city's booming artificial intelligence sector, which he sees as crucial to accelerating San Francisco's slow economic recovery from the pandemic. He has instituted police crackdowns on public drug use and disorder and has sought to curb some of the city's harm-reduction policies.

Dean Preston, a progressive former supervisor who was unseated by Mahmood in 2024, said the San Francisco left has still notched some important wins despite what he called a "rightward shift" among many local candidates. He pointed to the passage of a 2022 ballot measure he championed to tax the owners of vacant homes, as well as the 2024 victories of two progressive supervisors, Jackie Fielder and Chyanne Chen.

Yet Preston said progressives have been fighting against "an unlimited fire hose of tech money" opposed to their preferred candidates and causes.

Sherrill and Wong, for example, each benefited from six-figure spending by political action committees funded by wealthy donors, many of whom were tied to the tech industry. And Lurie is a Levi Strauss heir who largely self-funded his successful 2024 campaign; in office, he has continued to tap his personal wealth to fund outside consultants who help him craft his messaging.

"There's been an avalanche of money invested in trying to change and remake the city in many ways, both in terms of gentrifying individual neighborhoods and in terms of trying to change political narratives," Preston said. "The path back for progressives and people on the left is both exposing that and laying out the road map for something better, and keeping the focus on the things that are being obscured by these PR machines."

Preston said Lurie has gotten little blame for the fact that homicides are up this year and that housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for both renters and homeowners. The AI boom, which is partly to blame for rising housing costs, has also led some large companies in San Francisco to lay off workers in droves, Preston noted. AI could become a political vulnerability for Lurie if those job losses get much worse, which some experts fear they might.

"There's a growing disconnect between the PR operation of this administration and what people are experiencing in the city," Preston said.

Sunny Angulo, executive director of the progressive San Francisco policy organization Propel, said left-leaning activists need to find ways of "connecting with people about the realities of an affordability crisis" in the November election. She said that may mean focusing more on policy solutions instead of simply antagonizing Lurie, who enjoyed a 74% approval rating in a recent Chronicle poll.

"Blaming the mayor only gets us so far," Angulo said. "We have to put solutions out that proactively help solve these problems, that help present an alternative vision to the one that people are currently struggling through. Villains are good for storytelling, but sometimes I think voters are fatigued. … We can't just oppose things."

One issue progressives may rally around is a potential November ballot measure that would dedicate funds from an existing tax on pricey real estate transactions to affordable housing projects. San Francisco's chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, a left-wing group, is soliciting signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

Canvassers have been met with encouraging reactions from San Francisco residents who are worried about rising costs and an increasingly inaccessible housing market, said Aditya Bhumbla, a co-chair of the group.

"People can feel viscerally that we are on unstable ground for things you know and love in San Francisco," Bhumbla said. The DSA San Francisco hopes the tax proposal will resonate with voters concerned about affordability and the displacement of people such as artists and bike mechanics, Bhumbla said.

The measure would preserve an existing tax on real estate transactions greater than $10 million in value and earmark the revenue for tenant protections and the construction of new affordable housing. San Francisco voters approved the tax in a 2020 measure pushed by Preston, a democratic socialist. But the funds were not specifically allocated toward affordable housing projects, and Lurie and Mahmood have proposed cutting the tax in half.

In general, Bhumbla, who uses they/them pronouns, said they were optimistic about the future of progressive politics in San Francisco. Membership in the DSA chapter has been rising in the past few years, they said. But Bhumbla also acknowledged that "the left in the country - in the world even - is on the back foot."

Bhumbla pointed to the recent successes of politically powerful and deep-pocketed moderate political groups, such as Grow SF, which celebrated strong performances by the candidates and measures it backed across the city Tuesday.

"Like it or not, they're effective at what they do, and they have the advantage of having more money," Bhumbla said. "And if we're going to beat them head on, it has to come from our ground game."

Progressive organizers will also seek to marshal public support for Supervisor Connie Chan's bid to succeed Pelosi in the House of Representatives.

Chan, who is closely aligned with San Francisco labor groups, is expected to receive left-wing support in her campaign against state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is disliked by many local progressives partly because of his advocacy for YIMBY policies that encourage market-rate housing development. Chan told reporters Wednesday that she's trying to build a broad coalition for November that includes people who didn't vote in the primary this week.

Angulo, the Propel executive director, said Chan has an opportunity to cast herself as "a new kind of progressive" who is not just fighting President Donald Trump but also "putting out a vision for what kind of a leader San Francisco can be on the national stage."

But progressives will face many of the same headwinds in November that defeated them this week. Chan and her labor allies were vastly outraised by Wiener and his wealthy supporters - a dynamic that seems unlikely to change in the months ahead.

Moderates are also now turning their attention to the next city supervisor races, including in District 10, which includes the Bayview and is currently represented by term-limited progressive Supervisor Shamann Walton.

Theo Ellington, a nonprofit director who is running for the District 10 seat for the second time, said he sees Tuesday's results as an indication that "there's a silent majority out there still rooting for San Francisco to be on the rise."

Lurie has not yet endorsed in the November races, but Ellington said he'd love to earn the mayor's blessing in the race, where he occupies a moderate lane in a crowded field. In the tea leaves of early returns this week, Ellington said he sees signs that "the culture of politics is changing." The results show that voters want candidates who share Lurie's optimistic, pro-growth brand of civic boosterism, he said.

"That is what people are seeing," Ellington said. "We're not fighting against San Francisco - we're fighting for San Francisco."

Ko Lyn Cheang contributed to this report.

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This story was originally published June 5, 2026 at 7:06 PM.